


couldn't sleep for all the heat

by warmth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, post 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:57:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1451152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmth/pseuds/warmth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I haven’t seen you around much lately.” Derek says. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since. Since. </p><p>Stiles shrugs. “Hasn’t been much of me to see.”</p><p>“Yeah.” His face goes a little thoughtful. He’s holding a red shopping basket, rusty at the handles. His fingers flex when they catch him looking. Eggs and granola bars and a bag of chocolate kisses. “Yeah, I guess not.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	couldn't sleep for all the heat

**Author's Note:**

> A list alternative to a long essay about being grateful: Ciara. Kristen. Donna-Marie Riley poems. Bhanu Kapil. Shinji Moon's tumblr. Keaton Henson songs. Better fanfiction than this one.
> 
> This is immediately post-3b. If it sucks, feel free to tell me in the comments, although it would be much nicer if you just got out while you can haha. 
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](//pillowfortposey.tumblr.com) if it pleases you. :)

_We sleep alone and we are not lovers, but we both have trouble in the night-time, turn to wolves howling at the moonlight, biting at the fleas. The distance keeps us from getting too involved._ _\- Donna-Marie Riley_

 

+

(month one)

“I haven’t seen you around much lately.” Derek says. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since. Since.

Stiles shrugs. “Hasn’t been much of me to see.”

“Yeah.” His face goes a little thoughtful. He’s holding a red shopping basket, rusty at the handles. His fingers flex when they catch him looking. Eggs and granola bars and a bag of chocolate kisses. “Yeah, I guess not.”

*

(negatives)

Stiles is nine years old when his mother dies. Her disease progresses like a patch of ice, slippery and slipperier still. He remembers succumbing to that late at night and slipping down-and-across it, thinking it over. Trying to make sense of the things she whispered to herself under her breath that he happened to catch, lips like a cut plum, yellow and wet.

His father is quiet at home, when they leave the hospital. His footsteps are heavy. His good shoes never leave the closet anymore. Stiles tells him once that he misses her and his father says, “She’s not gone yet, kiddo.”

The yet gets stuck in his throat.

*

Scott stands next to him at the funeral and says, “It’s going to be okay.” He talks from the experience of losing a parent. Sometimes, Stiles thinks about who has it worse. Still doesn’t know.  

Stiles says, “Okay.” because it’s Scott and Scott always, always tells him the truth, even if no one else does. He pulls Stiles away from her open casket by the hand. She’s dressed in purple, her favorite dress once. It hangs off her body like spring rain. He takes one last look, then stares at the sky.

Above them, it’s so, so blue.

*

(month zero)

“Welcome back.” His father says when they walk inside, throwing the keys into the coin jar, nudging off his jacket. Stiles lets him walk him up the stairs, into his room. They stand there, awkward in the middle of it. A collected storm.

He wonders idly how many nights his father stood in his same place, looking for clues into a mind that wasn’t his.

“I’ll let you get settled.” John says when Stiles doesn’t reply, only looks at his stupid board. Thinks about tearing it down, tangling his fingers in the string.

His father claps a hand on his shoulder as he leaves and Stiles thinks about his words. The kind of words that imply this isn’t his home. That he’s some sort of stranger in a new place.

He waits until he hears the footsteps go and then he drops to his knees in the bathroom. In his churning relief, he throws up. In the end, there's the sickness, and the sickness is all about waiting.

*

(month seven)

“What are you doing?” Lydia asks, watching him spread himself out on the grass. Tuesday. A warm a night as any. His breath fogs in the air if he exhales hard enough.  

“Forgetting, duh.” Stiles tries not to think about what he’s forgetting. His fingers pet the grass softly. They probably need a trimming.

“Forgetting everything, or just Derek?”

“Who’s Derek?” He asks, closing his eyes.

Lydia doesn’t say anything, just lights another cigarette.

*

(month one)

“Where are you going?”

Stiles wishes his footsteps were quieter. Or that his father was less observant. “I didn’t know you were up.”

It doesn’t work and it definitely doesn’t buy him any more time than he had before. “Where are you _going_ , Stiles?”

“Nowhere.”

“Obviously somewhere.” He looks so, so tired, running a hand over his face.

“It’s okay, dad.” He says. Tugs at the strings of his hoodie. Where the hell are his keys. “Nothing’ll happen.”

His father swallows. “You said that last time, too.”

“Yeah, I know.” He knows, he does, but this is different. _S.O.S_. He’s learned better than to ignore them when they come, especially in the dead of the night. Especially from Derek. “I’m sorry.”

He leaves, in a sprint. His father watches him from the window and he says it again, in his head, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

*

Derek comes through his window on a Wednesday. “You didn’t have to. I didn’t know your father was saying no.”

“We were both saying no. Someone had to give eventually.” Stiles says, not looking up from the computer screen. “Besides. I think I like you better alive. Your death would be horribly scarring on everybody.”

He remembers what Derek looked like, bloodied up. “Holy shit, dude.” Body cold. Arrows warm. Remembers ripping them out of him and dragging his body up into the car. “You need to give me something, buddy. I can’t carry you all by myself.” The way his eyes fluttered behind closed lids.

“What are you reading about?” Derek asks, because he doesn’t know how to deal with people caring about him, no matter how reluctantly.

“Pyromaniacs.” He isn’t. He just wants Derek to leave him alone.

“Okay.” Derek goes, as if he can tell, the same way he came. The grass makes a sound when he lands and he can’t put his finger on what kind of sound that is.

*

“Thanks.” Derek says. His head lolls into the wall. “For coming for me.” He’s sitting in Stiles’ bathtub, legs open.  

Stiles jumps.  “I didn’t know you were awake.” The kind of stupid thing people say in movies. Inappropriate for this kind of situation. He goes back to cleaning muddied wolfsbane out of Derek’s wounds, picking at stray purple flower petals. They’re dry as leaves. His knees shift against Derek’s thighs.

Derek, strangely, finds this amusing. His laugh is splattered with blood. It trickles out the side of his mouth.

“How come you only find me funny when you’re dying.” He complains, wiping the blood away with his thumb. His hands are already covered in it, up past his wrists, then up past that. What’s a little more?

*

“I need you to look something up for me.” Derek says, on a Friday. Stiles hasn’t seen him since he let him sleep in his bathtub two weeks ago. His face is more shadow than skin.

Stiles turns in his chair. His voice is flat. “That sounds like a personal problem.”

Derek snorts, unamused. “You think so? I hope the people in this town know how to kill a selkie, then.”

“Fuck you.” Stiles rolls his eyes, then looks at him warily. “Selkies? Really?”

“Really.”

He debates this to himself. Doesn’t know whether to find it incredibly cool or extremely exhausting. Maybe both, he decides, fingers itching. “Fine.” He says, reluctantly. “Come on. The least you can do is help out.”

He points to the left side of his bed.

*

“So, what shot you anyway?” Stiles asks, trying for nonchalant. It really, really doesn’t work.

“Don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Well, you’re going to, asshole. I didn’t drag you out of a ditch for you to keep all the beans to yourself.” The dried blood under Derek’s fingernails refuses to dislodge itself. Derek’s eyes are half-closed.

“The beans?” Derek’s lip lifts again.

He almost grins. “You suck. Stop trying to change the subject.”

Derek says, “Kate shot me. Ran out of bullets, stole the hunters’ bows.”

And Stiles says, “Well, fuck.”

*

“How come you don’t just buy a computer of your own?” Stiles asks, unplugging his laptop from the wall and dragging himself over to sit next to Derek on his bed. He crosses his legs. His knee brushes Derek’s thigh and he jerks it away. Derek rolls his eyes, watching him, and doesn’t answer.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. The hypervigilance is getting pretty pathetic. Whatever. But seriously, why not? You have the money for it.”

He shrugs. “Didn’t seem important.”

Stiles laughs hard enough for his body to shake into Derek’s again and opens the first tab that comes up when he types ‘selkie’ into the search bar.

****  


“We could go, uh, buy you one,” Stiles offers, once they’re finished and Derek is moving to leave. There’s a stack of papers under Stiles’ bed that are marked ‘selkie’. He doesn’t know why he wants to keep them a secret. “If you want.”

“Sure.” Derek says, and jumps out the window. The leather flies out behind him.

 _Batman_ , Stiles thinks to himself, and grins. He  leans out his window, elbows against the sill, and whispers, “You think darkness is your ally? But you merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I - ”

Derek flicks him off.

*

“Isn’t she dead?” Stiles asks quietly, slumped back against the tub. Derek’s wounds have started healing, slowly. He watches the skin sew back together with a cruel sort of fascination.

His eyes are unblinking, watching leftover water trickle from the faucet. “Supposed to be.”

“I guess Peter was, too. Jesus. We’re living in Zombie Town. Why can’t someone better come back to life.” Stiles pointedly doesn’t think of his mother. Derek’s, instead. His sister, the older one he dug up. She seemed badass enough.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“Stop talking.” Derek sounds exhausted. He hikes up his own shoulder and lays his head against it. Stiles frowns and goes to get him a blanket.  

*

(month seven)

“When did you start smoking?” Stiles asks when the smell hits his nose, curling deep. “Thought you were too smart for that.”

Lydia snorts. “I needed something to calm me down.”

“And you chose an addiction? I’m pretty sure golf would’ve have a bigger pro than con list.”

“You found one too, didn’t you?” She’s talking about Derek again.

“Stop bringing that up. That’s the whole reason you’re here.” He waves his hand around at her general everything. “Distraction.”

Lydia flicks her pack at him, then a lighter. The fluid swishes around next to his ear.

“Distraction.” She puts her cigarette out, takes a drink of water, lights it up again. Returns it to the slot in her lips. “Have at it.”

*

(month one)

“Were you talking to someone last night?” His father asks at the breakfast table. He’s chewing bacon. There’s a tall glass of orange juice to his right that he doesn’t really like, but there isn’t anything else in the fridge.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, when he unfreezes enough to get his mouth moving. Tries to think about something other than Derek and how his aversion to modern technology makes Stiles smile. “Scott. On the phone.”

“Well, good.” His father says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Haven’t seen him around in a while. I think Melissa’s worried. You should invite him over.”

“Sure.”

Stiles sips his own orange juice and stands to kiss him on the head. “I love you, dad.”

He doesn’t know when he got so afraid of waiting for a reply.

 

The papers about the selkie are tucked into his pocket when he goes out to meet Derek. Pulls back the door to his apartment slowly, and wonders how the hell people who weren’t werewolves even got in half the time. Derek’s waiting for him, shirt off, sweaty. The way his chest rises and falls is ragged as a heart attack. Only just finished exercising, then.  

“Here?” Stiles asks, stepping into the middle of the room.

“Yeah, a little bit,” Derek stands and plants both hands on his shoulders, shifting him over about two steps. “There.”

Stiles looks down. Between his feet, there’s three bloodstains, like orions belt. He thinks he’s a little fucked up for making constellations out of Derek’s blood.

“Sorry.”

“Why? Happens to everybody.” Derek’s face is carefully blank and he wants to laugh, hysterically, because that’s a terrible thing to say. Happens to everybody. Crazy ex-girlfriend who burnt down my house came back from the dead to shoot me down. No way in hell.

“Are you ready to go?”

“I need to find a shirt.” He says. Stiles nudges one out from under the sofa with the tip of his shoe, staring at Derek’s bed over his shoulder. It’s unmade. Messy. A pillow is on the floor. Huh. Stiles pegged him as a straight lines kinda guy.

“If you sleep down here, what’s upstairs?”

Derek says, “Peter.” and they leave it at that.

*

(month three)

A knock on his window.

Stiles sighs, pushing away from his computer desk. “Don’t you have a library card or something?”

He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he passes out, one leg halfway through, and teeters on the edge. Stiles knocks his chair out of the way and pulls him in, watching his body splay across the floor like paint.

“My neighbors are going to think I’m a part of a gang.” He mutters. No one can hear him complaining, anyway.

“Why do you keep coming to me for this shit?” He grabs for his phone. Doesn’t know Deaton’s number, so he calls Lydia instead.

“What, Stiles?” Her voice is rough, chalky, like she’s been crying. He thinks of Allison’s cold hands and the way his mouth curved up as he watched and swallows back the bile rising in his throat.

“Derek’s in my house. I think he’s dying. I don’t know what to do.” There’s black on his lips and scarlet everywhere else. Stiles presses a hand to his neck, pulls it away when he feels like he’ll burn if he leaves them there too long.

“I’ll be right over.” Lydia says. “Don’t pass out.”

Stiles laughs, wondering if anyone still believes he would.

****  


It takes Lydia fifteen minutes to arrive, including a stop, she says, to pick something up. It’s the first time he’s ever seen her in sweatpants. She’s still the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, and the most terrifying. Derek moans something through closed lips.

“What the hell happened to him?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Stiles asks, worrying at his fingers. Lydia raises an eyebrow.

“He collapsed in _your_ bedroom.”

Like that’s supposed to mean anything. “He’s collapsed all over town. You think he told the high school building why someone was gunning for him too?”

Derek groans, again. Stiles nudges him with his foot. “Stay out of this.”

*

(month one)

“I think you should buy a macbook.” Stiles says.

Derek’s eyebrows scrunch up. “No.”

“Why not?” He presses his face against the glass of the Apple store. “They’re so pretty.”

Derek pulls him away, wiping at the smudge with the sleeve of his henley. “You’re going to get us kicked out of the mall.”

“You’re more of a PC guy, then.”

“I guess so.” They walk the other way. Stiles feels his heart break a little as he pulls him along, hand on his forearm, two steps ahead.

“I’m sorry, baby.” Stiles whispers over his shoulder. The apple store begins to shrink the distance.

Derek rolls his eyes.

****  


“Who was your first kiss?” Stiles asks, taking another sip of his father’s Jack Daniels. Derek’s sitting on his bed, reading about selkies again, because they couldn’t decide on a stupid computer and Derek threw his hands up and left. The Target guy asked if his boyfriend was always this pissy. _“Yes, yes he is.”_

“Kate.” Derek says, overly casual. Stiles winces, pulls his laptop back, replaces it with the bottle.

“That’s fucked up.”

Derek barks a laugh. “Yeah, I know.” And takes a swig.

*

(month zero)

“It’s going to be okay.” Stiles says.

“Okay.” Scott says. His eyes are red around the edges and his hands are tired. They sit on the couch beside him, like dead fish, wet and twitching.

He grabs a controller and chucks it, lovingly, at Scott’s head. “You wanna play Halo?”

“Yeah.” His best friend’s voice breaks, but he smiles a little like the way he used to.

The end, and here he is, waiting. Just like he knew he would be.

*

(month three)

“Try this one.” Lydia shoves a bag of wolfsbane at him, and a lighter. “I think it should work.”

He tries not to burn his fingers lighting them up. “Where am I supposed to, you know, put it?”

She taps her lips. “ _Really_?” But he does it anyway, nudging Derek’s mouth open careful as he can.

“I’m so sorry, buddy.” He says, and sticks his fingers between Derek’s teeth.

*

(month two)

“How long has it been?” Stiles asks, standing on the porch. He wonders what it was like, living here, in an empty forest. Not so empty back then, he reminds himself, thinking about how many Hales were always crawling around. “Breed like bunnies, those Hales,” His dad liked to say. His mother would slug him in the shoulder for it, before her knuckles went weak as cracked almond shells.

“Since?”

“Since you caught the scent?”

Derek licks his lips. “Few days, at most.”

Stiles runs a palm over the railing and imagines it disintegrating underneath his fingertips, turning to ash and dust. “And the selkie? It was here?”

“Almost sure of it.” Derek nods shortly, studies his nails, fidgets. Stiles never realized how much he moved until he started spending time around him, or even before that, when his entire body was still and careful under someone else’s guidance.

“Why?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Stiles flaps a hand out behind his back. “I’m talking to myself.”

“You think you could track it from here? Is is strong enough?” He turns back to Derek again, afraid to open the door, afraid of what might come pouring out.

Derek shrugs. “Maybe.” Then he runs off.

“I didn't mean right now.” Stiles says to the silence and gets back in the Jeep.

*

(month three)

Derek nearly bites his fingers off, jolting up. His eyes are bright, bright green. Eyes like the sea.  

“Jesus christ!” He scrambles back on his elbows and heels. Lydia watches him, then Derek, arms crossed. “Derek!”

“Stiles?” He looks slightly confused, tilting his head. Then he looks down at Stiles hands, where they’re bleeding, only slightly. The injuries are shallow, but they’re still injuries. “Did I? I didn’t think - ”

“Didn’t think what?” And it’s really his fault, sticking his fingers up against Derek’s incisors, but he feels like being pissed off anyway, irrationally. “What the hell did this to you?”

“What do you think?” Derek hisses, because he always meets Stiles when it comes to being angry, throwing a handful of crumpled papers at him, stained with blood. Stiles flattens them out against his leg.

“Well, shit.” He says.

And Derek says, “Exactly.”

*

(month seven)

“How the hell do you even do this all the time?” Stiles asks, choking slightly. Smoke spills out of his lips in sporadic puffs.

Lydia snorts from where she’s curled up on his porch swing. “I’m naturally good at everything. Try again.”

“I think I’m good.” He puts the cigarette down in the grass and hums to himself, something stupid, something by lil jon.

“Get low.” Stiles says aloud, snapping his fingers.

“Not even when my boyfriend is dead.” Lydia replies and he feels bad for laughing.  

*

(month two)

“I didn’t find it.” Derek says, nine p.m. He’s sweaty and half his face is covered in dirt. Stiles looks up from his laptop, one sock half toed off.

He raises an eyebrow. “Does your apartment not have running water?”

“You’re closer.” Derek’s voice is rough. He shakes his hair out like a dog. Stiles half-rises off the bed, hands thrown out.

“Not on my carpet, jesus, were you raised by wolves?”

Derek stares at him, mouth twisted sourly. “Ha. Wolf Joke. Funny.”

He laughs, short and hard, and flops back on the bed, foot caught beneath him awkwardly. “Don’t use all the hot water, my dad gets weird about it. You seem like the type to shower for an hour or something nuts."

“Doesn’t everybody shower for at least two.” Derek deadpans, rolling his eyes. Stiles wonders if eventually they’ll just stick like that, a complete symbol of his derision for the rest of the world.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He watches Derek’s back move as he walks, muscles moving like waves. “You couldn’t have waited until you got to the bathroom to take your shirt off?”

Derek casts him a glance over his shoulder and grins, all teeth. “Your poor ego.”

*

(month three)

Lydia gives them both the most knowing look he’s ever received in his life. The conclusive one that he always wanted from her before. The one she gave Jackson, when she figured him out.

She leans down and snatches the papers from his hands. Reads them over like lightning.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is quiet. Dead.

“I don’t know.” He still doesn’t, isn’t sure why he wanted to keep it between him and Derek for as long as he could.

“If this is about - ” _Allison_. Stiles was always good at filling in the blanks of other people’s sentences. He’d be a kickass boyfriend, really. Lydia tries again, clearing her throat. “I’m not _broken_.”

“No, you’re not.” Derek says, gruff. His gaze wanders over to Stiles. He offers his hand and helps him up onto the bed.

*

(month two)

“Did something happen?” Stiles asks, when Derek comes out of the bathroom smelling like the lemon shampoo he never uses. The last thing his mother bought for him. He thinks it’s nice on Derek’s skin, though.

Derek says, “Don’t worry about it.” His hair is flattened against his forehead. It makes him look more approachable. Almost cute, dare he say it.

“At least borrow some pants.” Stiles says, and scoots over on the bed. “You ever seen Game of Thrones?”

“If I say I read the books, are you going to compare me to Jon Snow?” His voice has the miserable quality of someone having done so. Incessantly. Stiles is betting on one of Derek’s sisters, recently or otherwise. He thinks again how he probably would’ve liked Laura.  

Regardless, Stiles crows and unpauses the episode.

*

(month six)

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Scott says. His hand is on Stiles’ knee. “But how did you and Derek even happen?”

“I don’t know.” His fingers feel numb. He pulls the blanket over his head. “I don’t know.”

*

(month five)

He’s screaming, wildly, throat-raw, and Derek is pulling him out of the water by the back of his neck and holding him, so so so close. He’s warm and Stiles is shaking hard, soggy hands threading into the hair at the back of Derek’s neck.

“I think I’m in love with you.” Stiles says.

And Derek says, “I’m sorry.”

*

(month three)

“Where the hell did a selkie get wolfsbane?” Stiles asks.

“I don’t know.” Derek said once that his mouth felt like poison and Stiles thinks he understands that. “It was on its claws.”

Lydia watches him carefully.

*

(month two)

Stiles paces the room several times, watching his phone, waiting for it to ring and get him off the hook. _C’mon, Scott, this is what you’re good for. Talking me out of the stupid decisions I want to make on an impulse_.

Scott doesn’t call.

“What am I doing?” Stiles covers his face with his hands, then presses the dial button before he can talk _himself_ out of it.

“Are you okay?”

He rolls his eyes. “Answer your phone like a normal person. I’m fine.”

“Why are you calling me?” Derek says, blunt as the edge of his teeth. Stiles licks his lips. That stings, a little.

“What, is it not allowed?” His voice goes a little high at the end. “Hey, Derek, maybe I wanted to have a nice conversation. A little chitchat. Nothing too life-threatening.”

“Why are you calling me?” He repeats.

“We should go to the movies.” Stiles says, instead. He can just see Derek raising his eyebrows like the sassy bitch he is and regrets it, regrets it _so_ bad.

“Don’t pick anything stupid.” Derek says, and hangs up on him.

*

(negatives)

His mother was a pretty woman. Skinny. Pale hands, eyes like a sunset on water, colored lips. Dimples. Dark shadows where her cheekbones curved in. She liked to play the piano on Wednesdays, only Wednesdays, and called him by his first name in public - his real one - because she liked the way people looked at her funny. She called his father Bucky and he never got that one, and now he’s too afraid to ask.

Stiles puts her pearl necklace back in the box and hopes the memories don’t follow him out of the attic. His shoes are dusty when he can see them right again, pupils exploding in the sudden fluorescence.

Sometimes, he wishes they had pictures of her in the hospital. He knew that mother, too. In fact, he loved that mother, even if no one else did.

*

(month three)

Lydia goes home with the papers and Derek lays down in his bed. Stiles lays down beside him.

“Do you get bad dreams?”

Derek cracks his eye open. “Sometimes I dream of you.”

Stiles sticks his tongue out. “You’re the worst. I hope I choke you in them.”

“I think we’ve done enough choking in real life.” His voice is small and quiet and biting. Drifting, like a leaf in the wind. Stiles’ mouth falls open, unsure as to if he should be offended. _We’ve_.

Derek rolls over and pulls the blanket over them both.

*

(month two)

He thinks there’s a big part of him that wants to fix Derek, strangely, and he doesn’t know why.

Derek says, “People can’t be fixed, Stiles.”

And he says, “Of course they can. It just takes the right people.”

*

Derek takes forever to answer his door.

“Stiles?”

“Nothing good is playing.” He says, slightly out of breath. There are about seven DVDs tucked under his arm. “Sorry.”

Derek’s face is lost. His eyes flicker to the DVDs. His hands twitch, like he’s preparing for Stiles to fumble them.

“At the movies.” He explains. “There’s nothing good playing at the movies.”

Derek raises his eyebrow questioningly. “So?”

“So? _So_? We were supposed to go! I can’t just take you to some terrible movie.”

He is starting to look slightly perturbed. “Are you alright.”

“ - so I brought some over. From my house. That we can watch, if you have a TV in here.” He stands in the doorway for another minute, panting into the silence. It’s awkward, but watching the decision being made on Derek’s face like a live action film is completely worth it.

“Fine.” Never has Stiles heard a sigh so fond. He grins at the thought. Derek pulls the door back further, looking around.

“What, are you waiting to be Punk’d?” Stiles rolls his eyes. “You need a friend.”

“Apparently I am being forced to have one.” Derek replies, stalking off into the living room. Stiles sprawls himself over the couch, throwing the DVDs on the floor. He hears the water running and in his head, he calls Derek’s not-bluff from the last time he slept in Stiles’ bed.

The idea makes his stomach warm.

*

(month five)

“I really did dream of you once.” Derek says, quietly. “When Kate shot me. I asked you how you could tell if you were dreaming.”

“Fingers,” Stiles says. Derek’s lips are painfully close. He likes the sound they make, right before he’s about to talk. The way they part. “You have extra fingers.”

“That’s exactly what dream-you said.” Derek replies, eyes slipping shut. “I don’t want this to be a dream.”

Stiles thinks that, that right there, is the moment. The aha for his heart. Fuck Derek Hale.

“It’s not.”

“Promise?” His eyes are completely closed now. Stiles mourns the view and holds up his hands, both five-fingered. Derek isn’t looking, but it’s okay. He’ll see enough for them both.

“Yeah. Promise.”

*

(month seven)

“I hate Derek.” Stiles says.

Lydia grins, as if she’s been waiting for this. Maybe she has. “No, you don’t.”

“Fuck you. I love Derek,” Stiles rolls onto his back again. “Everybody in this town knows that. I just want to pretend, okay?”

“Well stop it.” She stands, dusting ash off her skirt. “I loved Jackson. He’s gone. I could’ve loved Aiden. He’s gone. I loved Allison. She’s gone. Derek is still here. Stop moping just because he ran off at the sight of feelings, it’s what he _does_.”

Stiles wants to punch something, but she’s right, she’s always right. “You’re smart and I hate you too.”

Lydia laughs, quiet, and moves to sit beside him on the grass. Scott’s mother’s car pulls into the driveway where his father’s usually is. “Well, I knew _that_.”

*

(negatives)

He remembers the Hale house burning down because it happens on his birthday. His father comes home smelling like ash and wood and his mother the day before her eyes stayed shut when she fell asleep. He props himself up in a chair and stirs white frosting from the pantry and when his father walks through the door he says, “Look, Dad. I made my own cake.” And his father cries.

*

(month two)

“Doesn’t your father wonder where you are?” Derek asks, halfway through _The Fellowship of the Ring_.

Stiles shakes his head and lets his feet fall from the back of the couch into Derek’s lap. Surprisingly, Derek doesn’t push them away like he thought he would. Stiles grins, then doesn’t.

“If he knows I’m gone.”

“You shouldn’t scare him like that.”

“There’s a difference between scaring someone,” Stiles says, “And worrying them.”

Derek’s quiet, but his fingers curl around Stiles’ ankle, index, middle, ring, pinky. His thumb fits itself underneath. And if he focuses hard enough, he can feel Derek’s pulse there, rushing as a river.

The life in him is near-deafening.

*

(month four)

“My mom wanted to die. She asked me to smother her.” Stiles says. It’s two in the morning. He watches a flock of birds take off into the darkness of the night from the ledge outside Derek’s window.

“Kate sent me my brother’s fingers in a box.” Derek says and takes a drink from the wine bottle. Stiles steals it from his hands, liking the way their fingers overlap for half a second. The moon makes Derek look like an angel. He resists the urge to drag his finger over Derek’s cheekbone, startlingly pale against his stubble.

“We probably need therapy, dude.”

Derek’s laugh is the sound of insanity circling his brain.

*

“I killed my family off differently every time I met someone new.” Derek says the next morning. His chest is bare and the blanket is tangled around his waist. His hair stands up every which way, soft peaks framing softer eyes. Stiles turns on the heater and kisses him by accident.

“Sorry.” He says, jerking back. He doesn’t know why he did it. The leftover warmth on his mouth makes his face tingle. Derek’s lips were beautiful and welcoming and surprised, open as a sunrise.

“It’s okay.” Derek says, and presses his thumb to Stiles’ bottom lip. His fingers are steady against his trembling. “Heat of the moment.”

“Yeah.” Stiles agrees. Derek’s thumb moves with his lips. “Sure.”

“We can again, if you want.”

“Okay.” He smiles and moves his hand up Derek thigh, leaning in close. Derek’s breath smells like stale grapes and ruthlessness. He breathes in deep and swallows the distance between them in his teeth.

*

(month three)

Stiles stretches himself out on the couch. His socks are mismatched. He thinks one might be Derek’s. The inevitable sense of waiting gathers up inside his chest again. He doesn’t know when the feeling started, but it comes to him like the tides, sometimes low, sometimes high.

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

He’s asking about jobs, but Derek stops doing pushups for a moment and says, “Human.” then goes back to it again.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Stiles says, and stands, taking the blanket with him. The loft is perpetually cold. Something to do with Derek running hot. He wonders if it’s a werewolf thing or not, stores it away in the things-to-ask-Scott folder.  

“Oranges.” He sounds pissed.

“Are you serious?”

The fridge, filled with only oranges. Derek looks up at him over his shoulder and says, “Peter.” And again, like always, they leave it at that.

He dreams about this moment sometimes, when his head agrees with him, but he doesn’t know why. Nothing remarkable about it. Nothing remarkable, he thinks, is better than his mother’s lips going grey and pale and chapped while he watches, body wasting away to a paper chain.

(He remembers making the paper chains in class, for Christmas. On every one, he asked for his mother’s life.)

“Stiles.” There’s a hand on his shoulder.

“Go back to sleep, Derek.” He says. Smashes his face into the pillow underneath them.

“ _Stiles_.”

He cracks his eye open and flops onto his back. “ _What_ \- ” Then: his father, standing over him, with Derek Hale in his bed.

“I can explain?” He says into the hard lines of his father’s face.

“Please.” John says, crossing his arms. Stiles glares at Derek’s sleeping form.

“I thought you were supposed to have super hearing.” He mutters under his breath and flicks himself in the wrist a few times, to get his brain going right.

*

(negatives)

His favorite post-mother memory is him and Scott. The beach, the first time, in the awkward little gap between middle and high school.

It’s the sunniest day they’ve seen in weeks and his father packs up the car, fills it with sandwiches and bottles of gatorade and towels he got as an anniversary gift, towels his mother drew waves on the bottom of because they were too plain for her taste. He pulls her old beach chair out of the attic for Melissa because they’re getting tired of trying to pretend she never happened, tired of turning the pictures of her towards the wall, but not tired enough to let her name touch their tongues. He sometimes wonders if that state will ever come. Scott says it does, with time.

“You ever been to the beach before, Scott?” He asks, grinning down at his toes wiggling in the sand. Grains of the sun, his mother used to call them. Scott doesn’t answer, only runs screaming into the greatness of the ocean, stretched out in front of them. This gasping blue swallows his best friend up to his knees.

Stiles takes that as a deep “no.” and buries his feet in Scott’s footprints, leaving a trail of splashes out behind his churning legs when he hits the water. They hoot and don’t say much between the noises, listening to the waves crash in and out and in again, forgetting the rest of the world sprawled out on their backs, light as sailboats on the water.

It’s the only time he doesn’t think about his mother, holding Scott’s hand so he doesn’t float away while he sleeps. Five in the afternoon. He watches the sun sink into the water and thinks he might do that someday, too. Sink down and return again, when he’s ready. A new day, made out of his body. Scott stirs, slightly, and in the distance he can see his father, sitting with Melissa and smiling.  

*

(month five)

The selkie is beautiful and hypnotic and looks just like Derek. The way it walks, the way it smiles, the way it laughs. It takes him a while to figure it out. It’s only then, though, when Derek says, “You’re mine, Stiles.” That’s how he knows. Because for all their empty kisses and open wounds, they don’t talk about how they feel, not with each other. It’s more, “You’re an asshole,” and “I didn’t know you knew her,” and “Shit, don’t do that, you’re going to cut your finger off. Like this.”

“Who are you?” Stiles breathes. And it bares its teeth and shows its face and Stiles screams.

*

(month three)

“See, Derek and I are researching,” Stiles snaps his fingers as if he’s just remembered something. “About the thing. In town. That’s killing people. You know, the bodies you keep finding?”

His father runs a hand over his face and sighs. “You’re a terrible liar, Stiles. Wake him up and tell him breakfast is in five.” He says, and goes back downstairs.

Stiles flops back against the bed, turning to Derek. “Thanks for your help, asshole. Now my dad thinks we’re fucking.”

“Language, Stiles!” His father calls, from down the hall.

Derek laughs at him without opening his eyes. Then he sticks his arms under the pillow and he breathes.

*

(month five)

He hates this part in the kidnapping. The beginning. The punishing hope that someone will come to save you. Stiles, slightly more cynical than the average Joe, isn’t loving his odds.

“I wouldn’t make a very good meal,” He says. His hand brushes against the scales at the base of the selkie’s tail.

“Not a meal,” It corrects. Eerily, it still sounds like Derek. “A _husband_.”

*

(month seven)

“Are you going to come out of the car anytime soon?” Stiles asks, igniting and extinguishing Lydia’s lighter. He burns his fingers a few times, but it’s worth it, watching the flame sway. An invisible dance made only for it, and maybe a partner in the wind, if the flame so pleases.

The door swings open. “I totalled the bike.” Scott says, and sits down beside him. Lydia offers him the pack of cigarettes too, which he declines, gracious as ever.

“I think we’re broken for good.” Stiles says. Coughs. “Sorry about your bike.”

“It’s okay. Sorry about Derek.”

“Who’s Derek?” He tries again, weakly. His smile is crumpled paper and too many teeth. Scott grins anyway and Lydia rolls her eyes, lights another cigarette, blowing smoke like a sleek red dragon. “ _Boys_.”  

*

(month five)

“You’re going to be the death of me.” Derek says. He’s got a series of welts on his stomach that haven’t healed yet. Marks. Stiles’ teeth made those. He grins and presses his face into the curve of Derek’s hipbone.

“You’re gorgeous.” Stiles says, kissing his bellybutton. Looks up and meets Derek’s eyes. They’re burning, beautiful things - his gentlest feature. Unable to help himself, he draws himself back up Derek’s body, sliding his lips up the line of Derek’s cheek, along his eyebrow, over his mouth.

“I mean it.” He murmurs, thumbing one of his nipples. Derek gasps and arches and Stiles drags his eyes over his sweaty, coiled limbs. “You’re a fucking work of art.”

“No,” Derek says, closes his eyes. His head it tipped back, as if everything - the words the sensations - are too overwhelming for him. Stiles lingers over his mouth again, pressing a kiss there once, twice, three times.

“Believe me.” Stiles says, and that’s how he knows he’s in too deep.  

*

(month three)

“You ever play Halo?” Stiles asks, throwing a baseball up into the air, watching it fall again. Stretches his legs over the arm of the couch. He’s trying to reach the ceiling in increments. Up, a little higher. Down again. Rest. Repeat.

“No.” Derek says, and keeps doing his curls in the middle of his living room. Stiles watches the muscles in his stomach, the ones rippling in his arms, and thinks of cut glass. Razor sharp. Thin as the mint floss he sticks between his teeth in the morning.   

“How come you work out if being a werewolf already makes you strong?”

Derek’s eyelashes flutter. Charcoal and Ash. He looks as if he’s debating what to say. Stiles wonders which answers he’s waffling between, if they are both true or not. “Appearances, mostly.”

He snorts. “Like you need any help in that department, dude.”

Derek startles, whipping his head around to stare at him curiously. Eyebrows draw in. He stands, slowly, body rising like a cobra’s.

“Teach me how to play.” He says suddenly.

“What, Halo?”

“Yeah.” His voice is almost hesitant, but he lifts Stiles’ legs to sit down.

Stiles grins. “Yeah.” He tosses Derek a controller. “Okay.”

*

(month five)

“My mother killed herself.” Stiles says.

It’s a game they play, now. Or a habit. An acquired, Derek-induced habit. Derek looks at him over the straw of his coke. His cheeks are hollowed.

“My father used to beat my mother.” Derek says. Stiles bites at his own straw and likes what Derek’s eyes look like when he lays his confessions on the table. Handguns, he thinks wildly. The secrets. It’s his choice: to shoot or to graze or to pull the ammunition out and use it to clean his pockets.

He leaves the guns on the table and takes Derek’s hand instead, reversing out of the movie theater parking lot. The ammo stays against his thigh, solid and heavy.

*

“I don’t remember my father’s first name. Not all the time.” Derek says. His body has gone loose and sated. Exposed. Stiles curls around his back and smiles. Kisses the back of his neck, suckles lightly.

“My dad never drank a lick until he met my mother. He was an alcoholic for five years after she died.” Stiles says, smoothing his hand up Derek’s chest. Curling it under his jaw for a moment and thumbing under his chin. He likes the way the stubble prickles against his fingers, and even more the way Derek sinks into him.

“You’re the first friend I’ve had in a long time.” Derek says, quietly, tracing his fingers over the path Stiles’ take.

“I know.” He flattens his cheek against the jut of Derek’s shoulder blade. Tries to school his voice into something sarcastic. “I’m _honored_.”

Derek snorts and Stiles feels his heart duck under the weight of him, back to his front, seeking safety in his body.

*

(month seven)

Midnight. “I slept with him.”

Scott raises his eyebrows slightly, in surprise. They settle like dust. “I slept with Kira.” He says, and rubs the back of his head. “I felt guilty after.”

“Because of Allison?”

“Yeah.”

Lydia shakes her head. “Don’t. I’ve slept with all kinds of people. They’re dead. They don’t care about what we do anymore.”

Scott blinks hard a few times and Stiles watches Lydia’s face crumple a little, underneath the perpetual smoke cloud, metaphysical or otherwise. He looks up at the sky, instead, because he wants to cry a little too, and for all the wrong reasons.

“Derek killed the selkie.”

“I know.” They say, in unison, still lost. He thinks of children, of him and Scott running through the branches, of Scott’s wheezy, simple breathing. Of Lydia Martin’s football jerseys before Super Bowl Sunday, at the grocery store. Her sister making fun of her.

Then of her sister, dying. Scott’s father, leaving. His mother, getting greyer and greyer until all she was knit from was their shades.

“I hate,” He says, like he’s admitting to a crime. His voice breaks a little. “I hate this town.”

Scott laughs and Lydia joins in and, as much as he doesn’t want to, as much as he doesn’t want the truth to be a joke, he does, too.

*

(month six)

Derek. Radio silence. Stiles stares at his phone for three days straight and eats all the cereal in his house dry. He wonders if Derek’s listened to the voicemails he left him. “Hey, this is Stiles.” “Why did you start this.” “I just want to see you.” “I’m sorry, for what I said. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” “This is the last time I’m gonna call. The ball is in your court now, dude.”

“Did you and Derek break up?” His father asks, on the fourth day. Stiles pauses the movie he’s watching, some stupid chick flick Lydia recommended.

“Something like that.” He says, and tries to smile.

John sits down beside him on the bed. “I’m sorry. He was a good kid. You were good together.”

“I know.” His voice cracks like an eggshell. His father gathers him up, slowly, and he cries. Outside, the sky is red, like maybe its been bleeding too.  

*

(month five)

The selkie drags him down by the ankles.

When he was little, he used to have nightmares about drowning. His father told him it would never happen to him, but he still wore a pair extra of floaties in the pool than was necessary. His mother took pictures and laughed her ass off and sank her feet in up the knees to get a better shot.   

_You know when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out. It's called voluntary apnea._

There’s a crooning somewhere. Maybe it’s just in his head, maybe it’s the lack of oxygen. He thinks about Derek, unsurprisingly. Imagines the way his lips shaped his words. _“I killed my family off differently every time I met someone new.”_  His own personal therapy.

The selkie’s hands are cold and solid and he struggles against it hard as he can underwater. Everything feels like bad slow motion. Like death. He thinks this is a shitty last moment, because all he can remember is small, stupid things:

A Quentin Tarantino movie. His mother’s favorite sandwich. The way his father puts his wedding band on as he comes out of the shower. The sound Scott’s bike makes when he pulls out of Stiles’ driveway. Derek’s old car and the smell of blood in it, so, so strong.

_It's like no matter how much you're freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding. Then when you finally do let it in, that's when it stops hurting. It's not scary anymore._

He doesn’t want it to not be scary.

_It's, it's actually kinda peaceful._

A hand, dragging him back out from the water and holding him and he says, “I love you.” and Derek jumps back into the water and he wonders what he did wrong, how they ended up where they are. He sits back on his knees, numb, watching Derek rip its throat out with his teeth.

Stiles starts laughing right around then. Derek still has blood in his mouth when he says, “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

His laughter bleeds out and dies.

*

(month seven)

They light Allison a fire and Scott drifts home and Lydia stays the night. In the morning, his pillow smells like smoke. She leaves a bookmark on his desk before she goes.

 _It’ll all work out_. It says. Bubble letters and neon. Beacon Hills Library, at the bottom, like a barcode. The giraffe underneath the phrase smiles and maybe he does a little, too.

*

(negatives)

When he was younger, he never stepped on the cracks in the road, because he knew the rumors, and a broken back was a luxury his mother just couldn’t afford. She smiles when he tells her so, wringing his wrists. His backpack has a card made of scraps and glitter glue sticking out of an unzipped pocket. It says Scott and Dad and Mommy.  

“I wouldn’t mind,” She says, holding his face in his hands. Precious cargo, she would call it. Hers. “Not if you were the one breaking it.”

*

(month ten)

Stiles is sitting in his bathtub. The water has gone murky around him, bubbles faded into the dirt hanging at the edges, the pieces of him he scrubbed off with a layer of skin. He’d been out running and somehow, his feet led him here.

Derek’s in a deputy uniform when he comes home and finds his body, staring up at him, knees to chest. Idly, he thinks about distractions and Derek coming in through his window and the fox curling up in chest, still beating, after all this time.

“I killed people.” He says and places his hands on the edges of the tub. His knees shift forward slightly.

“So have I.” Derek says. There’s a wolf in the spaces between his ribs and the fox paws at the cages, missing that, missing him.

“I’m sorry I told you I loved you.” Stiles says, pushing his hair out of his face as he stands. Derek drags a towel off the rack for him, watches the way his hands fold it over his hips. His eyes are dark and his fingers twitch, like he wants to touch.

“You still can, you know.” He looks down at his feet, still wet. His eyelashes run water down his cheeks, into his mouth. “If you want.”

It’s his thumb first, against Stiles’ hipbone. His eyelashes flutter. Derek slides the other hand around to the small of his back and pulls them together. His pulse is against Stiles’ ear.

Derek says, “I’m not sorry.” and guides them to bed.

Sometimes, Stiles imagines the two of them alone, on their own plane. The darkness swallows everything around them, but they remain, untouched, unmoving, bright as an exploding star. Derek smiles and kisses his neck and he thinks, _yeah, sure, it’s all about waiting, in the end._

**Author's Note:**

>  _I get into brutal arguments with myself and lose every fight and we are not lovers, but she is there to tend the injuries, to lather honey over the open wounds, to bathe me in essence of vanilla and wring the sadness out of my hair. The letters stop and start month to month, year to year. The poetry shrinks and swells, shrinks and swells like a great tide. The ocean still breathes between us, a monster of epic proportion in the face of our love, and she tells me about the new lovers sometimes: girls with dandelion hair and soft bellies, and we are not lovers, but she says she pines for me still. Says I am a war she has come home from, but cannot forget. Says I am her post-traumatic stress disorder. Says she experiences me like a phantom limb, no longer a part of her, but always itching. She says there is no recovering from me and we are not lovers, but still we cannot help but be tender towards one another. Still she is as close to me as my own flesh. Still she is an illness I cannot cure. Still she is every song, every episode of weeping, every white-hot desire, every bursting orgasm, every joy, every crippling loss. Still, she is love, love, love, until the end of my days, until the music stops playing and the lilies all wilt and the stars flicker out of existence. And there is love, so very much love, but we are not lovers and I am making my peace with that._ \- Donna-Marie Riley ([x](//five--a--day.tumblr.com))


End file.
